Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Northern Kazakhstan Likely to Be Putin’s Next Target for Aggression

Paul
Goble

Staunton, November 28 – Given that Vladimir
Putin very much hopes to get a new political boost like the one he received
following the Crimean Anschluss, there is “a high degree of probability” that
he will seek to incorporate into the Russian Federation a portion of some other
post-Soviet state, according to a Moscow blogger.

That leaves
northern Kazakhstan, he continues, and he gives three reasons for thinking that
Putin will attack precisely there.First, Northern Kazakhstan has a predominantly ethnic Russian population
and thus the argument Putin invoked in the case of Crimea could be deployed
again and with probable success.

Second, Kazakhstan’s president,
Nursultan Nazarbayev, is 77, and has been in power since Soviet times. That
means, the blogger says, that since 1991, many aspects of the communist system
continue to exist, something that will make it easier for Russia to annex and
absorb those parts of it dominated by ethnic Russians.

And third, annexing
northern Kazakhstan would “solve for Russia a transportation problem” because
at present, the main rail line connecting Russia with the Far East passes
through Kazakh territory, something which “creates a mass of bureaucratic
problems for the Kremlin” that annexation could solve.

“When might one
expect the massive arrive of ‘little green men’ on the territory of Northern
Kazakhstan?” the blogger asks rhetorically. “If Putin remains in power for a fourth
term, this should happen in the next six years because Nazarbayev hardly will
survive longer than that.”But it could
happen very soon if Putin needs a victory and can’t find one elsewhere.

But the most important reason Putin
may seek a “Northern Kazakhstan is ours” strategy, the blogger concludes is
that “having become in the eyes of the people the Ingatherer of Russian lands,
he would gain the moral right to the additional correction of the Constitution
of the Russian Federation and thus guarantee his reign without end.”